Burma tightens the screws on dissent

Bangkok Post Oct 2, 2007

Rangoon - The Burmese military on Monday tightened its security screws in Rangoon, which was eerily subdued after two weeks of peaceful anti-junta demonstrations that were put down with brutal efficiency.
Many of the troops previously posted at Pagoda Road, the flashpoint for last week's protests, had been removed on Monday, but people entering the area were subject to inspections by security personnel.
Possession of a slingshot has become a jailing offence in the city. The New Light of Myanmar, the government mouthpiece, published pictures Monday of youths who had been arrested for owning a "catapult," as slingshots are termed.
There were reports of arrests at night when a curfew is in place from 9 pm to 5 am. On Sunday night at least 20 people in Kyauktada and Pabepan townships were arrested in their homes, sources said.
Truckloads of soldiers cruised the city, keeping watch on the population, ready to deposit troops at the first sign of protests.
Buddhist monasteries in Rangoon's townships have been told to send visiting monks back to the provinces and to stop the practice of allowing laymen to spend the night.
It has long been the tradition in Burma, a predominantly Buddhist country, to allow laymen travellers to spend the night, earning temples the nickname of "poor man's hotel."
Barricades that were erected last Wednesday in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda, where riot police and soldiers beat back monks with batons and tear gas, have been removed and the debris cleaned up.
"They are tidying up for Gambari," said one Rangoon resident, in reference to visiting United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari. Gambari, on an assessment mission in Burma after the country was rocked by its worst violence in 19 years, arrived on Saturday. He was allowed to meet with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for an hour on Sunday.
Gambari was in Naypyidaw, the junta's hideaway capital, situated about 350 kilometres north of Rangoon, on Monday where he had sought a meeting with the regime's chief Senior General Than Shwe.
There is great skepticism about what Gambari's mission will achieve.
"The United Nations has been sending special envoys to Burma for the past 18 years and they have no real mandate, so nothing is likely to happen," said Bertil Lintner, a Burma watcher and author of several books on the country. "They just issue reports and that's it. Only the UN Security Council can issue binding resolutions."
China and Russia have blocked such resolutions at the Security Council in the past and are likely to do so again.
Gambari has been tasked with finding out what happened in Burma over the past two months, when sporadic protests escalated into the largest anti-military demonstrations witnessed in the country since 1988.
The 1988 anti-military demonstrations ended in an army-led bloodbath that left an estimated 3,000 people dead. Last week's crackdown was more restrained, but the international outcry has been deafening. Whether concerted action against the regime will follow remains to be seen.
The protests were prompted by two-fold to five-fold increases of fuel prices on August 15. After suffering two years of double-digit inflation, people were incited by the hikes to stage a wave of small protests, first in Rangoon, leading to the arrest of hundreds.
In early September the protests were picked up by the 400,000-strong Buddhist monkhood.
What first started as peaceful barefoot marches in Rangoon peaked with crowds of more than 100,000, shouting political slogans and calling for change.
The junta put its boot down on the monks' barefoot rebellion Wednesday, beating clergy and laymen protesters with batons and dispersing them with tear gas and rubber bullets. At times real bullets were fired on the crowds, killing at least ten, including one Japanese photographer.
Other sources claim that the casualties were much higher and that the killing continues.
According to the Oslo-based opposition radio stationDemocratic Voice of Burma, four monks died Sunday at a temporary detention centre in Rangoon while one monk was reported to have died at a detention centre in Myitkyina in Kachin state near the Chinese border.
The reports could not be confirmed. (dpa)